“Don’t be evasive,” she said. “Of course those tapes.”
“So he played them for you,” I said.
“Yes. Did you make them?”
“I did,” I said.
“You had no right to make them,” she said.
“But I did,” I said.
“And I may very well sue you,” she said.
“Let me know what you decide,” I said. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Don’t you realize you may have destroyed my marriage?” she said.
“Shoot the messenger,” I said.
“What? . . . Oh, you’re saying I destroyed my marriage.”
“I’d guess that depends to some extent on how you and your husband feel about monogamy,” I said.
She looked good: blue suit with a skirt that ended above the knee. High black boots, a white turtle. Her makeup was good, her hair was in place, everything was swell, except that she looked tired. Given the length and vigor of her evenings, I might have looked a little tired, too.
“I want those tapes,” she said.
“Nope.”
“All of them,” she said.
“Nope.”
“How much do you want?”
I was still in my window bay. I looked down and saw Vinnie across the street. He too was observing the career women, while he waited for Jordan to come out. He looked up at my window. He had probably guessed where she was. He saw me. I saw him. Neither of us had any reaction, but I smiled to myself.
“I asked, how much money do you want?” she said.
“I won’t sell them,” I said.
“They’re mine. You have invaded my privacy. I am determined to retrieve it.”
“Might be sort of like retrieving virginity,” I said.
“I want those tapes,” she said.
“Why?” I said. “The cat’s already out of the bag.”
She sat suddenly in one of my client chairs. It was as if her backside had collapsed and taken the rest of her with it.
“I have to have them,” she said.
“What else is on there you don’t want known?” I said. She began, quite forcefully, to cry.
“Is this good?” she said as she cried. “You like to see women cry?”
I didn’t see any light at the end of that tunnel so I didn’t say anything.
“It will ruin my life if you won’t give them to me.”
I shook my head.
“Stop it,” I said. “You’re embarrassing us both to no avail. If you want to talk about how your life will be ruined, maybe I can help you avoid it. But this is pointless.”
“What,” she said. “If it’s not money, what? Sex? Is it sex?
You can have sex if you want. Just give me the tapes.”
“I’m certainly fl attered,” I said. “But no thanks.”
“I do want to have sex with you,” she said around the sobbing.
“You’re very desirable. Really, just give me the tapes, honestly, I would enjoy it.”
“Stop it,” I said.
“I’m very good. I know how to do everything.”
“Stop it,” I said again. Harder.
She took a deep breath and I was afraid for a moment that she was going to run down a catalogue of what she was good at. But she didn’t. She stared at me with the tears running down her face and her chest heaving and let the breath out without speaking, and dropped her head. We sat for a minute. Then she stood up abruptly and headed for the door, with her head still down.
“I’ll get them,” she said without looking up. “Goddamn you, I will get them.”
She left without closing the door. I stood in the window looking down until I saw her come out of the building. Across the street Vinnie took a look at her and glanced up at me. I turned my palms up and shrugged. Vinnie strolled after her as she headed up Boylston Street on foot.
I walked over and closed my office door and walked back to my desk and sat. I wondered if she knew how to do anything I didn’t know how to do? The options weren’t limitless. Maybe Susan would have a thought.
16 .
It was a bright morning. Early November and people were strolling past my corner as if it were still summer. I was reading the paper, celebrating the return of Calvin and Hobbes with two donuts and an extra coffee. Doherty came into the office.
“I threw her out,” he said.
“Jordan,” I said.
“Yeah, I threw her out of the fucking house.”
“You hurt her?” I said.
“No, I mean I didn’t touch her. I told her to get out and she went.”
“She say where she was going?”
“No,” he said. “It’s over. Gimme your fi nal bill.”
“She take anything with her?”
“I let her pack a suitcase. Gimme your bill.”
“You don’t want me to fi nd Alderson?”
“Fuck him,” he said. “It’s over. I don’t care where he is.”
“It would be a bad idea,” I said, “to go after him.”
Doherty’s face was pale except for redness around his eyes. He nodded.
“I know,” he said.
“There’s life after death,” I said.
“I know that, too,” Doherty said. “I’m going to survive this; I won’t kill him.”
“Good.”
“I’ll always regret it, though,” Doherty said.
“Not killing him?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice to think about,” I said, “on cold winter evenings.”
“Yeah.”
“You might want to talk with someone,” I said.
“A shrink?”
“Might help.”
“I don’t need it,” he said.
“Got a guy if you do,” I said. “Guy named Dix, specializes sort of in cops.”
“I’m not a cop,” he said.
“FBI,” I said. “Close enough.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I’m a trained investigator,” I said. “Plus your wife said so on the tape.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Cutting-room fl oor,” I said.
“Maybe I should hear the whole thing,” he said.
“Maybe you should move on from it all,” I said.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I should.”
I wrote out Dix’s address and phone number on a piece of notepaper and gave it to him. He took it and folded it up and stuck it in his shirt pocket without looking at it.
“Anybody at the bureau know about this?” he said.
“No.”
I knew the question would come and I had already decided on my answer. By now Epstein might have figured something out. If he had, there was nothing Doherty could do about it. If he hadn’t, there was no point in him worrying about it.
“Good,” he said. “Doesn’t help, you know, it gets around that there’s trouble at home.”
I nodded. Doherty stood. I waited.
Finally he said, “We didn’t start off so good, but you been pretty decent with all this.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll send you the bill.”
He nodded, and hesitated another moment, then turned and left.
17.
Do you think he’ll be all right?” Susan said.
I was pouring some scotch into a tall glass fi lled with ice. It took concentration to get it just at the right level.
“Doherty?” I said. “Yeah, I think so.”
I added soda precisely to the rim of the glass and stirred the ice around with the handle of a spoon.
“He’s an FBI agent,” Susan said. “He carries a gun. He comes from a culture that puts some premium on machismo.”
I took a sip of my scotch and soda. Perfect.
“He’s pretty tough,” I said. “He’s willing to take the shortterm pain for long-term gain.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it would be a source of great pleasure for him to shoot Alderson dead,” I said. “But it would probably ruin his life. And the satisfaction of remembering the shooting wouldn’t be enough to compensate.”
“Goodness,” Susan said. “You’ve given this some thought.”
“Yes,” I said. “He’ll move on.”
It was a Friday night. Susan had just come upstairs from her last patient of the week. She was wearing one of her subdued shrink outfits, a dark suit with a white shirt. The kind of outfit that says, It’s about you, not about me. She took the suit jacket off and hung it on the back of a chair. I smiled. She wouldn’t look subdued in a flour sack. The best she could do was to barely avoid fl amboyant.